Thursday, 9 July 2026

Colombia's coal export volumes fell 23% in 2025, its national association of coal producers reported. The decline tracks a government push to steer the economy off the fuels that drive its export revenue.

Colombia ranks as the world's sixth-largest coal exporter and the fourth-largest oil exporter in Latin America, according to Climate Home News.

Gustavo Petro's government took power in 2022 and moved quickly against new fossil output, halting fresh oil and gas exploration contracts, suspending hydraulic fracking pilots, and promising to stop building new unabated coal plants, according to Climate Home News.

Colombia recently hosted the world's first international conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, according to Climate Home News.

The country's power system relies heavily on water. Close to 70% of Colombia's electricity comes from large hydro-electric dams, according to Climate Home News.

Colombia's renewable energy association forecasts that the country may hold more than 4.2 GW of installed variable renewable capacity by the end of 2026, according to Climate Home News.

The European Commission and the UK government opened a new platform on Tuesday to coordinate electrification efforts across national governments, according to Climate Home News. The platform is meant to align how countries track and advance the shift toward electric power worldwide.

Dozens of governments, with the EU and UK at the front, have committed political backing to a faster electrification of the world economy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, Climate Home News reported. Backers cast the drive as a "powerful weapon" against fossil fuels.

COP31 co-hosts Türkiye and Australia have placed a target at the center of this year's UN summit agenda: electricity supplying 35% of final energy demand by 2035, up from around 20% now, Climate Home News reported.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says hitting that 35% share is needed to keep the 1.5C warming limit within reach.

Several governments signed on when the platform opened, including Brazil's COP30 presidency, the joint Australia-Türkiye COP31 presidency, Ethiopia's incoming COP32 presidency, Canada, the Philippines and South Korea, according to Climate Home News.

At a Santa Marta conference on moving away from fossil fuels, 60 governments led by the Netherlands and Colombia identified electrification as an area where their work can line up with the UN climate talks, Climate Home News reported.

The European Commission is set to adopt its Circular Economy Act this autumn, part of what Climate Home News describes as the EU's target to lead on circularity by 2030.

Recycled feedstock has barely grown across a decade. The European Environment Agency put the secondary material share of total use at 12% in 2024, up 1.5% from the 2010 level.

Import reliance stays narrow. Climate Home News reported that every unit of Europe's heavy rare earth metals arrives from China, while South Africa supplies 71% of its platinum.

A World Economic Forum survey of 491 manufacturing executives found 79% called circularity crucial to their business now, and 95% expected it to matter within three years.

Carsten Wachholz, business-policy engagement lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, called the act "a critical opportunity to turn circular solutions from a niche proposition into a mainstream market choice," according to Climate Home News.

Some producers already rework old equipment. Signify strips down lighting systems as old as 10 years and rebuilds them, often below the price of new units, Climate Home News reported. At Tuborg Havn in Copenhagen, crews cleaned, upgraded and refitted more than 80 fixtures with LEDs that will run 3.5 times more efficiently than the units they replaced.

Faster electrification is the best way to secure lower energy bills and stronger energy security in the United Kingdom, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

CCC chair Nigel Topping said the country could save up to 80m barrels of oil and 1.5bn therms of gas each year, worth almost GBP 8bn at current oil and gas prices, according to Carbon Brief.

The CCC notes that UK greenhouse gas emissions are now roughly 50% below 1990 levels.

Despite that progress, the committee warns that 17% of the emissions cuts required to meet the UK's Paris Agreement climate target are not addressed by any government plans at all, according to Carbon Brief.

The CCC states that government plans for meeting future targets leave a significant gap to the UK's international climate pledge, per Carbon Brief.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant will rise 20% to GBP 9,000 from GBP 7,500 starting July 21, targeting rural households switching from heating oil to a heat pump, according to UK DESNZ.

Leaflets explaining how to claim the extra funding will reach 200,000 eligible homes in England and Wales this week, UK DESNZ said.

The government has confirmed over GBP 50 million in support for vulnerable customers on heating oil, according to UK DESNZ.

The Social Housing Fund will receive a GBP 100 million boost to support the delivery of up to 57,000 solar installations for households in England this financial year, UK DESNZ said.

The government is backing Great British Energy to extend rooftop solar support to a further 100 schools and colleges this year, according to UK DESNZ.

The UK government announced the launch of a first-of-its-kind expert taskforce on 26 June 2026 to advise on how to anticipate and respond to the growing risks climate change poses to national security, according to UK DESNZ.

The taskforce is co-chaired by Climate Minister Katie White and Security Minister Dame Angela Eagle, UK DESNZ said. It will meet to pinpoint gaps in the UK's preparedness and identify the most serious climate and nature threats to national security.

The government pointed to recent domestic damage from extreme conditions. The UK Health Security Agency estimated over 1,500 heat related deaths last summer, according to UK DESNZ. Analysis cited by the government showed that in 2025 hot and dry conditions led to GBP 800 million in crop losses for British farming.

The launch follows the UK's 2025 National Security Strategy, which identifies climate and nature loss as core drivers of global instability, economic disruption and security risk, according to UK DESNZ.

The government has also set a target for the seventh Carbon Budget, cutting emissions by 87% between 2038 and 2042, according to UK DESNZ.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed an emergency order requiring a Colorado coal plant to remain operational, the U.S. Department of Energy said. The department cited grid reliability and electricity cost concerns as the basis for the order.

Under the order, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Platte River Power Authority, Salt River Project, PacifiCorp, and Public Service Company of Colorado must take all steps needed to keep Craig Unit 1 available to run at the direction of the Southwest Power Pool, the department said. Public Service Company of Colorado operates as a subsidiary of Xcel Energy.

The order runs from June 29, 2026, through September 26, 2026.

Craig Station Unit 1 had been set to close at the end of 2025. Wright directed Tri-State and the co-owners to keep the unit available in two earlier emergency orders, in December 2025 and again in March 2026.

The department said more than 17 gigawatts of coal-power generation were kept operational in 2025.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation's 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment flags the WECC-Rocky Mountain assessment area as exposed to risks from an aging thermal resource fleet, the department said. That fleet can trigger unplanned outages, worsened by supply chain problems and limited vendor availability, according to the assessment.

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson pledged up to CAD 73 million for 12 projects across Canada to speed mining work and build links carrying Canadian critical minerals to global markets, according to Natural Resources Canada.

The largest slice, up to CAD 51.57 million, flows through the First and Last Mile Fund to five projects backing critical minerals production and supply chains, Natural Resources Canada said. That fund draws on CAD 1.5 billion in federal money set out in Budget 2025.

Another CAD 19.6 million runs through the Energy Innovation Program, split among five clean energy and industrial decarbonization projects, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Hodgson made a set of separate commitments at the 2026 Energy and Mine Ministers' Conference in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. At the conference, he also committed over CAD 16 million for clean energy infrastructure projects in British Columbia, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

Alongside provincial and territorial ministers, Hodgson named five interties across the country to move forward, Natural Resources Canada said.

The department will put up to CAD 15 million toward building the Canadian Digital Core Library, a national digital platform.

Columbia Mayor Barbara Buffaloe was in central London during the city's peak temperature of 36.1 Celsius, roughly 97 degrees Fahrenheit, which Inside Climate News reported as a June record for the city.

The heat forced a change to the program itself. Organizers scrapped a session on extreme heat and mitigation because the near century-old library booked for it at the London School of Economics had no air conditioning, according to Inside Climate News.

Buffaloe holds the post of vice chairman at Climate Mayors, which Inside Climate News described as a bipartisan network of nearly 350 U.S. mayors.

Columbia adopted a climate action adaptation plan in 2019, under Trump, with emission-reduction targets across transportation, residential energy efficiency, and community resilience, Buffaloe told Inside Climate News.

On transit, the mayor said Columbia used a federal grant to fund its electric bus fleet and upgrade the depot where the buses are stored overnight, according to Inside Climate News.

Residents can also claim city rebates for home solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations, Buffaloe said.

The Panama Canal expects fiscal 2026 revenue to run past its $5.2 billion forecast, with higher traffic during the closure of the Strait of Hormuz cited as a factor, according to Rigzone.

Daily transits climbed to 40 or 41 ships at the height of the Hormuz shutdown, up from a usual 34 or 35, Espino de Marotta said. Wait times for unbooked crossings stretched during the surge, and in April a single vessel paid a $4 million premium to move to the front of the line, Rigzone reported.

LNG tankers increased transits through the route as buyers in Japan, China and Korea shifted to US suppliers in place of Middle East producers such as Qatar, which were hit by the war in Iran, according to Rigzone. Even after a deal reopened Hormuz, US cargoes have kept moving to Asia, and the canal now averages one LNG tanker a day.

The canal's board picked Espino de Marotta in May as the authority's next administrator for the 2026 to 2033 term, Rigzone reported, and she begins her term in September. Her remit includes a package of major projects, a new dam and reservoir, two ports and an LPG pipeline, carrying a combined cost of roughly $8.5 billion.

Work on the reservoir and the canal's port terminals is set to start in late 2027 or early 2028, Espino de Marotta said.